Tap Water nitrate question and water change method

[rwbama]

Couple of questions please.

My local water report has nitrate concentrations listed as 0.75 parts per/million. Most on here have expressed it as some concentration per/liter. Are my local water readings ok? don't know how to compare.

Also the water hardness is expressed as 124/parts per million. Can anyone tell me about that?

Also I've decided that I can keep a 25gallon aquarium in the room next to my new 75gallon discus aqarium (when I get it) keep the 25g full of treated water with a filter and a heater in it ready to go when I need it to do a 30% water change. Aquarium will be in easy hose reach of main tank so all I would have to do is drop a pump in and fill it up with good new water.. Finding a way to do the water changes correctly with minimal effort was the last piece of the puzzle I believe. Do you think this would work ok? thanks for your time.

[DiscusDave]

Couple of questions please.

My local water report has nitrate concentrations listed as 0.75 parts per/million. Most on here have expressed it as some concentration per/liter. Are my local water readings ok? don't know how to compare.

Also the water hardness is expressed as 124/parts per million. Can anyone tell me about that?

Also I've decided that I can keep a 25gallon aquarium in the room next to my new 75gallon discus aqarium (when I get it) keep the 25g full of treated water with a filter and a heater in it ready to go when I need it to do a 30% water change. Aquarium will be in easy hose reach of main tank so all I would have to do is drop a pump in and fill it up with good new water.. Finding a way to do the water changes correctly with minimal effort was the last piece of the puzzle I believe. Do you think this would work ok? thanks for your time.

Hi,

All the Nitrate kits I've used read ppm, 0.75 is low (probably would appear as zero on most aquaria test kits). Generally you want Nitrates < 50ppm but Discus keepers prefer much lower levels. If you do want to quote as mg/l the conversion factor is 1, i.e. 0.75 ppm Nitrate-N = 0.75 mg/l

A hardness of 175 ppm is equivalent to about 10 on the dGH scale (I assume your talking general hardness (GH) rather than Carbonate Hardness (KH)? That's relatively hard - probably a bit harder than you'd want for a discus tank. (The conversion factor is divide by 17.8)

Dave

[rwbama]

Thanks for the info Dave. Thats about what I had figured from the readings. My local water is pretty good just a bit harder than is ideal. I'm not interested in breeding, at least at this point and I was hoping the water would be ok without having to use RO. I'm planning on having a planted tank and hope that may help some.

[DiscusDave]

Thanks for the info Dave. Thats about what I had figured from the readings. My local water is pretty good just a bit harder than is ideal. I'm not interested in breeding, at least at this point and I was hoping the water would be ok without having to use RO. I'm planning on having a planted tank and hope that may help some.

I've got a planted discus tank with ADA substrate - it defn helps softening water and bringing the PH down (as will driftwood).

Buffers like Seachem Discus buffer can help since they precipitate calcium to soften water - but they're phosphate based so you can end up with more phosphate than you'd like in a planted tank. Carbonate based buffers are more appropriate in a planted tank (i.e. Sechem Acid and Alkaline buffer).

Have you measured KH - it's probably more important than GH?